I accidentally stumbled across this during a Google Image search — it's a street sign in Plaistow, east London, obviously named after the man himself, near where he grew up.

Is this a one-off, or are there more examples of this?

(I suspect the Stephen Street that's off Tottenham Court Road, predated the record producer.)

Admittedly this is in questionable taste, but I've always thought that, had Rod Stewart tragically died around early 1975, he would by now have attained the kind of mythical reverence afforded to the likes of Nick Drake and Kurt Cobain. Instead he's now, y'know … Rod Stewart.

I'm now wondering how this hypothesis would apply to other solo artists?

I'm writing my magnum opus at the moment (ahem) and a Bluetooth keyboard case for my iPad 2 would be perfect. Except I just sent one back to Amazon on account of its horrible rubbery keys, and its lack of both an apostrophe key and a right-hand shift key.

So I'm after something that works well on table and lap, and is suitable for proper touch-typing (i.e. all the keys are in the places they're supposed to be).

1. 壹
2. 貳
3. 參
4. 肆
5. 伍

Other dialects may beg to disagree.

So I'm going to post a video of a cat playing a theremin.

I expect we can all agree that most TV remakes lie somewhere between pointless (Martin Clunes' Reggie Perrin) and jaw-droppingly terrible (does anyone remember ITV's Golden Girls remake, The Brighton Belles?).

But for every 49 Likely Lads (the Ant & Dec one, I mean), there's one Battlestar Galactica, glistening like a diamond in the steaming pile of manure.

So what, in the half-forgotten vaults of telly-land, is worth revisiting?

I reckon it's time to resurrect Mind Your Language. I watched an episode of MYL on YouTube this year, just to check if it was as bad as I remember (it was); however, as a veteran of language classes myself, the idea of a sitcom set in a language school is certainly a good situation (even if the original was bereft of comedy). There's every opportunity there for comedy, pathos and social comment, if you can remember to leave behind all lazy stereotypes of foreigners.

For me, I think it's the film Incubus.

To quote the tagline:

"On a strange island inhabited by demons and spirits, a man battles the forces of evil."

For not only does it star a young, unknown William Shatner, but the whole film is in Esperanto!

I'm worried this has started to reach epidemic proportions.

So I went out to dinner in a big group last night with some friends and friends-of-friends. The food arrives and suddenly a dozen iPhones appear and everyone's taking pictures of their plates.

Lord knows what happens to these images — are there food-sharing social networks about, where people can post pictures of their meals and discuss them? Will Mark Zuckerberg end up purchasing one of them for the GDP of a small African country?

Does anyone on the board indulge in this strange practice? What's it all about?

The late, great Mikey Welsh would have been 41 today. He was, without doubt, the finest bass player Weezer ever had.

He influenced an entire generation of bass players who really liked Weezer and few people will forget his nine-or-so months with the band.

So remember him this way. RIP Mikey.

So I've been spending an inordinate amount of time recently on GarageBand for the iPad (yes, I know I'm late to the party here). And rather splendid it is too.

Thing is though, all those drummer jokes I've cracked over the years are coming back to haunt me. I can play instruments with strings and do some rudimentary piano accompaniment, but I have to admit that I'm clueless as far as drumming is concerned. None of my attempts on the manual drumkit sound remotely like any drumming I've heard, and the drum machine (where you move the icons around the grid) just seems to do its own idiosyncratic thing.

So does anyone have any suggestions, or some pointers to the basics of drumming?

Alright, it's admittedly an old chestnut, but we haven't done this for a while.

So this week, I was listening to a discussion about the humble vibrator. Turns out that this was only the sixth domestic electrical device ever to be developed. It predated both the electric iron and the vacuum cleaner by about ten years.

To put this into context, the vibrator was then viewed as a medical device. Physicians of the time were diagnosing the nebulous condition of 'female hysteria'. And the treatment for this ailment? The euphemistically named 'pelvic massage'. However, they were having to do so much of this that their arms were getting tired, hence the need for this newfangled machine.

Now I'm really no piano player, but I like to dabble for my own amusement.

I think I have one of those piano-playing styles that come about when you put a guitarist in front of a keyboard. Where you work out the three important notes in the guitar chord, play them with your right hand and alternately strike some sort of root note with your left. (If I'm feeling ambitious, during my Bobby Crush moments if you like, I'll play two keys with my left hand!)

David Bowie played like this in the early 70s — although he had the good sense to drag Rick Wakeman out of the nearest pub for Hunky Dory — as did Paul McCartney in the 60s.

So my question is, what are the 'proper' piano players doing when they're playing bog-standard piano accompaniment? Do they just mix it up more? Or is this too hard a question and should I just pay for a few lessons?

Sister Luc Gabriel was The Singing Nun, Allan Smethurst was The Singing Postman and Matt Monro — rather unfairly — was referred to as The Singing Bus Driver (if only all bus drivers could sing like Matt Monro).

Any more examples of these monikers? Was there a Singing Newsagent? Or a Singing Optician?

If not, could this naming convention have benefited any other artists? Would Elvis Presley have been better off as The Singing Truck Driver? Jack White as The Singing Upholsterer? Elvis Costello as The Singing Data-Entry Clerk? Or Jimi Hendrix as The Singing Paratrooper?

Now you probably assumed that Spandau Ballet were a bigger band than Dumpy's Rusty Nuts because they were better looking, more stylish, more pop and were marketed at teenage girls. Right? Wrong. It's all the work of the illuminati-controlled music industry. And David Icke has rumbled them.

Now only the masochistic need watch this — I've sat through it so you don't have to and I've made a handy summary in the comments.

As promised, here's the Word cliché bingo thread. We're happy to slag off journos, but what are the most overused phrases on the board? Here's how to find out — go to Google search and use the following syntax in the search box:

site:wordmagazine.co.uk "your search term here"

Put your query in quotes, as it will pick up phrases rather than individual words. As the thread originator, my completely arbitrary rules apply — nouns and proper nouns will be disallowed. Here's the (occasionally updated) list:

The Massive — 37,400 hits
ATM — 27,200 hits
To be honest — 14,800 hits
Return to form — 11,900 hits
To be fair — 9,170 hits
Is it just me — 5,190 hits
Of this parish — 4,150 hits
How good is / was / were — 4,112 hits
Grumpy — 3,770 hits
HJH — 3,300 hits
What's not to like? — 3,242 hits*
FPO — 3,180 hits
GLW — 3,170 hits
None more … — 2,860 hits
A pedant writes — 2,650 hits

* The sum of a and b.
And special mentions for 'if you will' (25,200) and 'that is all' (9,280). Unfortunately I can't separate the cliched use from the acceptable use.